31 março 2013

I'm going to rant also

Unusual amount of junk in the NYTimes today. So here is MY rant, without links because no one deserves to read those articles.

- Nearly all teachers pass evaluations. Big surprise. Passing is not hard. Most students pass. Most managers and workers also don't get fired at the end of the year, although many are mediocre. At the end of the article, the author says why, although without noticing: a few percent of teachers who underperform get fired. The rest are doing alright, not necessarily great.

- A pointless article about "lowriders" in S Paulo, Brazil. What is a lowrider anyway? I live in S Paulo and in the US, and the only thing I know is that it is not something that matters.

- Why does a rant by a certified fool like David Stockman gets published?

- Inane platitudes about how to raise children. Parenting today is much better then in the good old days. I'd make the big compliment: most parents I meet are almost as good as mine were. Yes, they let us walk around, we didn't have cell phones, they worried, we got home. Now we give kids cell phones and worry less. If Frank Bruni doesn't like iPhones, he can take them away from his friends, not from my daughters.

- Poorly argued opinionizing about how China will become more innovative then America despite (or because) it is a repressive dictatorship. Having an opinion without an argument is not a reason to interrupt my Sunday newspaper reading. Having written a book is not a credential either. Anyone can write a book these days.

- The miracle in Northern Ireland. Peace in Northern Ireland is not a miracle. The United Kingdom is a free country. Catholic and Protestant should be able to live together like Hindu and Buddhist, Jew and Moslem. We do it in the US, we do it in Brazil. That they kept fighting for so long is a shame on both.

- Gossip about baseball players' contracts is not sports writing.

So here is my rant. I'm complaining so that I don't forget the good reporting that gets drowned in the junk: exposing ineffective protection of workers against poisonous chemicals, the role of slavery in the Northern industrial revolution, citizen science...